Q & A — Ana Rubio

Please welcome Ana to the blog today. She is a non-fictional writer, and I think a first for the blog but I think you will find her quite interesting!

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What were you like at school?

I was a good student. I always tried to overcome my grades.

Were you good at English?

Yes, I’ve always loved English.

Well, you know, I’m Spaniard and I live in Spain. When I studied, English was not taught at schools. But my father taught English to my brother and me at home when we were only children (at 8 and 9). Then, English started to be taught at schools when I was 12. At that time, I had a nice English level and I was really the queen of the class, lol!

What are your ambitions for your writing career?

Of course, becoming a well-known writer, to connect with the public. And why not?, to become a Best Selling Author.

Nazism and Holocaust http://nazismoyholocausto.blogspot.com.es (The main goal of this blog is to think about the darkest time of our history until now: the Holocaust, the Nazi cruelty against the Humanity).

Give us an insight into your main character. What does he/she do that is so special?

Well, as I’ve written non-fiction books or articles, I can’t talk about a character. But, I can talk about the Nazi man, the main “character” of my work. This is a manufactured man, an automaton (“a zombie”) who can’t make any decision by himself. Anyway, this individual is guilty and responsible of the evil that he or she’s provoked.

What are you working on at the minute?

A non-fiction book.

What’s it about?

This time the focus of my next book will be on the victims of the Holocaust, not on the perpetrators.

What genre are your books?

Non-fiction. But after that book about the victims of the Holocaust, I’ll start a Thriller.

What draws you to this genre?

When I worked in my Thesis about the Nazism, I realised that the Nazis did not only want to eliminate “their enemy”; their main goal was to annihilate the human being. The human being means everyone who could think by themselves, everyone who didn’t agree with the Nazis –ideology or facts, everyone who was free in every sense of the life, everyone who was not healthy according to the Nazi “movement”. Nazism defined itself as a movement, not as a Party.

The focus of my research was on how Nazism worked and how Nazis were able to do what they did.

My research really hit me hard. You know, it’s hard to learn how the human being ends up with their own humanity and their main goal is the lust for power. To get it, according the Nazi movement, the annihilation of the other is required at all.

Which actor/actress would you like to see playing the lead character from your most recent book?

Bearing in mind that it’s not a fiction book, but it could be, maybe, Angelina Jolie would be a good choice because of her personality. Moreover, her father was the main star in The Odessa File. It could be a challenge for her and an honour for me!

How much research do you do?

Whatever I need to. I mean, I want to assure me not to write contradictions or urban legends, basically.

Have you written any other novels in collaboration with other writers?

Not a novel, but a book about the Bible. We wrote about the meaning of some biblical passages at the same time that we showed the society of each period of time, -a socio-political analysis and some polemic subjects were dealt with.

Why did you do decide to collaborate and did that affect your sales?

Well, you see, I didn’t think about sales. I simply thought it was a great opportunity to spread the Bible message with a current language for everybody.

When did you decide to become a writer?

I’ve always loved to tell stories. When I was a child, I made up stories about whatever. People told me something that had happened and I said: “ O.k., and what if…” I just made up a story.

But, writing… Maybe, at the high school. I wrote a journalist report about the Persian Shah, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi and the Ayatollah Khomeini, an Iranian religious and political leader, who made Iran the world’s first Islamic republic.